Saturday, August 15, 2009

Seven Blood-Stained Orchids (1972)

Cue idiot from IMDB:

"If violent Italian slahers (aka giallo) are your cup of tea, you are probably going to be a little disappointed with this film. The movie plays more like a whodunit than like a typical giallo movie. For the most part, it is pretty restrained (for this kind of movie), with little gore and too much dialogue. The story does seem a little too far-fetched, and I knew the killer's identity as soon as I saw him/her."

I'm not sure which movie this person has watched, but it's a very inaccurate description of Seven Blood-Stained Orchids. First of all, a giallo IS a whodunit, and this is a pure giallo in every aspect. There's black gloves, many murders - violent ones and at least one with a lot of blood, and the dialogue is for once not boring at all. So I would say, to parafras "Hal-900 from WA, USA": "If violent Italian slahers (aka giallo) are your cup of tea, you are probably going to be very happy with this film". Sure, everybody is entitled to their own opinion, but this person is just TO retarded. Okey, fuck it.

Someone is killing of seven women who stayed at a hotel a year before the events in this movie. One of them is Giulia (Uschi Glas), but she's protected by her loving husband Mario (Sabato) and he also starts to investigate the mystery himself - and becomes a suspect himself, no surprise. The stupid cops have no clue how to stop the murders, but Mario is getting closer and closer to the solution... and of course the murderer knows this and soon everybody is in danger!

Umberto Lenzi was during the height of his career one of the most entertaining directors to come from Italy. He made every kinda genre and often did them very good. He's not famous of his giallos, but Seven Blood-Stained Orchids is absolutely one of the best giallos ever made. It's pretty standard as a movie, but it's never, never boring and has a fun and tight script where I would say it's quite hard to guess the killer. Antonio Sabato is a wonderful hero and a very good actor, who might have to good looks to be take seriosly by critics. Rossella Falk has a smaller part, but is excellent.

The murders are violent, but never goes into Fulci or Argento-gore. Except one murder, with a electric drill, that get's way more bloody than I expected it to be. But Lenzi has a sense for sadism and he get's to show of some nasty violence here and does it with a masters touch. As usual the movie is well shot and has a lovely score by one of my favorites, Riz Ortolani.

The best giallo I've seen in a long while and it's something you gotta see if you are into the genre.